Currently Running Manga Discussion

[Spark Of Spirit]

 

How did they screw this up so badly? Seriously, what in the world are they doing?

[VLordGTZ]

Why didn't they just include it in the Jump subscription.   
It makes no sense for a year of Platinum End to be about the same cost as half a year of Shonen Jump.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

It looks like Viz is getting greedy. They are trying to bank off of the popularity and success of Death Note and Bakuman in order to make some extra cash from a manga made by the same pair, but this will only encourage more people to read illegal scans of the manga, which will be a bad thing for the business.

I think that fans should be vocal about putting this practice down ASAP, before it becomes a commonplace practice.

[Spark Of Spirit]

If they wanted to charge an extra chunk of change they could have moved Blue Exorcist, Seraph, DGM, and Platinum End into their own version of Jump SQ and release that instead every month on a separate subscription.

That I could understand.

This? No chance am I biting. For that price I might as well just wait for the physical volumes to come out.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I just realized I didn't say anything about the actual issue. Well, it was as good as usual, but I'd like to say something about Black Clover.

I have no emotional investment in this character. I know nothing about them. I don't even know how powerful they are. Is the twist showing this character half-dead supposed to pull an emotion out of me? Because they have barely done anything yet either in the story or as a character. But it's treated as a big emotional moment even though it falls completely flat at it.

This is my main problem (and really the only problem) with Black Clover. There is no characterization. I want to be more emotionally invested in the story, but I can't if I'm not given a reason to. The manga simply refuses to slow down for a chapter or two and give me a reason to care. Even early Naruto and Bleach did that much (to their credit) even if that completely vanished at one point it was at least there at the beginning. The investment existed at one point. I'm still waiting for Black Clover to stop throwing action scene after action scene at me to slow down and give me a reason to want to follow these characters.

This isn't a weakness other manga in the magazine have. Not MHA, not World Trigger, not One Punch Man, not Food Wars, not even Nisekoi. This isn't a problem a series in a professional anthology magazine should have, especially one that is gaining traction since it's begun. I do hope at some point this issue is addressed because it is hampering what is otherwise an enjoyable read.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Yeah, weak characterization is BC's biggest failing at this point, and it's been really bothering me lately. I ranted about my dislike for how the Charmy suplot played out in the latest issue review, and I also compared where the series is now to where Naruto was by this point, and the latter was far more effective with it's character development and emotional moments at this stage. Compare what happens to Fegoleon in this chapter to something similar that happens to Sasuke during the Haku fight, or even Kakashi's plight during the first Zabuza fight, and there really is no question as to which pulled it off better. I've said it before, but BC really needs to develop and let us get to know it's secondary characters more before it tries to do big things with them, because as it stands, the only characters I'm genuinely invested in are Asta, Noelle, and Yuno.

Also, there were some bizarre mistakes in the way BC was presented in Jump this week. Missing pages, duplicate pages, notable spelling mistakes....I expect Crunchyroll to mess up like this (though I shouldn't...how is it that they still haven't got their shit together?), but Viz rarely makes such bad errors with Jump. Maybe they've fixed it by now, but it added another detractor to what was otherwise a decent issue in of itself.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'm worried that Tabata's idea of character development is that chapter where he crammed in all the knights for a short introduction speech one after the other and then quickly moved on from them. That's a rookie writing mistake. The characters should have been introduced naturally through the flow of the story and developed through what happens: not given a small introduction and a handful of lines while the story is stalled. Whoever his editor is should totally be catching this and helping him fix it. I have hope he'll learn and get better, but this one flaw is pretty crucial for me as a reader.

And yes, there were quite a few errors in this week's issue. Add in that to the missing special chapters and the Platinum End news and I'm wondering if someone at Viz drank some brown water or something.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Yeah, shoving out all those characters out at once like that was a poor writing choice. I hope he spends a few arcs developing these characters well before he tries introducing any more.

On a tangent, here are the rankings for the October 12th issue of Weekly Shonen Jump:

My Hero Academia (Cover, Lead CP)
1- Assassination Classroom
2- One Piece
Mononofu (Not ranked)
3- Black Clover
Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma (Center Color)
Samon the Summoner (Not ranked)
4- Haikyu!!
No.9 (One-Shot, Center Color, 47 p.)
5- The Mishaps of Kusuo Saiki
Hinomaru Sumo (Center Color)
6- Straighten Up! Welcome to Shika High's Competitive Dance Club
7- Toriko
8- Kochikame
9- Nisekoi
10- Kagamigami
World Trigger (Not ranked. Was absent in issue #39)
11- Bleach
12- Best Blue
The Story of Isobe Isobee

[Spark Of Spirit]

Of the new series, I enjoyed Mononofu. Though I didn't like chapter 3 as much as the first two, it has a good amount of potential. Samon did absolutely nothing for me, and I would be disappointed if it outdid Best Blue since that one feels far better made to me.

Another question: Why hasn't Viz licensed Straighten Up! yet? It would add a lot of variety to the current magazine.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Yeah, Samon was a total dud, but I really liked Mononofu and hope to see more of it. As for Straighten Up!, my guess is that they don't think a dancing manga like it will really sell well over here, which is why they've passed on it, at least for now. At this point, they'd probably prioritize running Assassination Classroom to the lineup anyways. Perhaps what happened with PE might have been at least in part a tradeoff for us getting Mononofu starting early November, but not wanting to overstuff the issues. While I'm hoping will turn out to be the case, I have a feeling we won't see another new series added to the lineup until one of the current series ends. Though, if I'm right about what's going on with Toriko right now, that might end up happening pretty soon...

[Spark Of Spirit]

You think Toriko is heading for the end? I honestly find it hard to tell. It's very confusing right now to an outsider.

[VLordGTZ]

It sounds like quite a few series in Jump are heading towards their endgame: Gintama, Assassination Classroom, Bleach (depending on how much longer Kubo drags it out), and now Toriko.  It will be interesting to see what the magazine is like when they leave. 

[LumRanmaYasha]

You think Toriko is heading for the end? I honestly find it hard to tell. It's very confusing right now to an outsider.

Well, lately it's been confusing to a lot of fans who've stuck with the series from the very the beginning, so you can't be faulted there.

But yeah. I've had my suspicions since the series abruptly interrupted the Cooking Competition in Blue Grill to focus on the developing stuff with Acacia's revival, but after reading the scan for next week's chapter, I'm convinced that Shimabukuro is being forced to end the series ASAP. I honestly expect it to end around it's 350th chapter, or at least around the end of this year/early next year. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, and Shimabukuro has just been rushing through things and shifting the focus around so much because he just feels like it (which would be a worse thing, so...idk about that), but I'm 90% positive that Toriko's been canceled and is on it's way out sooner rather than later.

Why it's getting canned when it regularly ranks in the middle while Bleach always rank at the bottom infuriates me, but I can't say I don't understand it. Even though it's shit now, and the sales have been dropping every year, Bleach still sells well, and it sells well internationally. Even though Jump tried to push it as the next big thing for a couple year, the truth is that Toriko was never really all that popular. It was never a real international smash-hit, much less a phenomenon, like Naruto and Bleach were. It's sales both domestically and internationally never reached the level of any the big 3 in their prime, and in the last two years it's sales have been dropping, and plenty in WSJ sell better than it now, including World Trigger. So as much as it disappoints me as someone who's been invested in Toriko for many years, and still think there's a lot of good in it even though some people like the WMR community have turned their backs on it, I can't say I don't see why they'd decide to cancel it, especially since Jump is so competitive now that it's a real struggle for promisingly popular new series to survive. That said, considering that so many other manga in Jump are seemingly coming to a close and will likely end in 2016...this really feels like an unnecessary and unfair measure to me. But still, I'm just speculating. The coming weeks should make clear what's really going on with Toriko.

It sounds like quite a few series in Jump are heading towards their endgame: Gintama, Assassination Classroom, Bleach (depending on how much longer Kubo drags it out), and now Toriko.  It will be interesting to see what the magazine is like when they leave. 

Don't forget Nisekoi. That's definitely winding down too. Really, losing all of those long-running and popular titles will be a real blow to the magazine, so they definitely have to find more new series that have the potential to gain as strong a following and audience to replace them. Both MHA and Black Clover are working for them, and a couple others are going strong, but they still need to find more "next big things" to properly sustain Jump now that a good chunk of the "New Power Generation" are starting to wind down.

Anyways, on tangentially related fun, here's some WSJ stuff I got at the Viz booth at Comic Con today!



I was thinking of getting the Sailor Moon bag instead (one bag came free with any purchase), but ultimately, it just felt appropriate for me to go for Jump. Actually, I also wanted to buy OPM vol. 1 & 2, since they were offering those on a two for one deal, but they sold out of them before I got through the line, so I decided to get volume 3 instead since I was still getting it a month before it's release date, which is pretty nice. That Naruto volume is the final volume with a special NYCC variant cover and exclusive bonus content, which I why I decided to get it since it was the only NYCC exclusive item they were selling that I had much interest in. I was thinking of also getting the regular version of the volume just for fun and the sake of having both, but they weren't selling it, and surprisingly, neither was my go-to comic shop when I went to visit it before heading home. Interesting that the one time I actually wanted to buy a Naruto volume, they weren't selling it.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Sales of Jump (like all the anthologies) are also down, so maybe they're going back to the drawing board to look for their next hit. MHA and Black Clover are still young and growing in popularity, World Trigger has good volume sales and an anime, Bleach still sells volumes and well internationally, and One Piece is still big, so it seems unless you're a newer manga with room to grow or a proven hit then there's just no room for you right now.

It would certainly explain how viciously new series have been treated over the last few years compared to years past.

But you are right about Toriko. It was really big a few years ago, but it hasn't reached nearly the same level as One Piece, Bleach, or Naruto, did at their peaks. Though to be fair, none of those three are as popular as they were a decade or so ago either. Jump leaned on them too hard for too long. They didn't really expand their brand much at the time focusing only on very similar battle manga not all too different from any of the Big 3.

It is strange that so many series are ending at the same time, however. Unless they have a pocket full of masterpieces ready to go out of the gate, they're going to have a lot of problems down the road.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Well, One Piece's peak of popularity was actually during the Marineford arc five years ago, and it's still arguably more popular now in terms of it's sales and omnipresence in japanese culture than it was ten years ago, and the same is true for Naruto whose popularity somehow only went up in Japan during it's final arc, so I'll have to disagree with you as far as those two go. 

Jump is still the highest selling manga anthology in Japan and their series heavily populate the top manga sales lists, and they've made sure to branch out with both a digital and international presence. So compared to other imprints like Sunday, I'd say they're still in a pretty good place. I don't think Jump is necessarily desperate for another success right now, since they have a few promising titles like MHA and BC developing. But with so many of their series ending soon, there's definitely pressure on them to find other new series that can fill the voids they leave asap.